


past the setting sun

by boobuu



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Korean mythology & folklore, M/M, Post-Canon, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:52:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8562814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boobuu/pseuds/boobuu
Summary: “Let me tell you a story, Goody.”





	

The road to recovery feels tortuously slow, and layered over with poor memories: Billy gasps, bleeding through his bandages, and Goody hears the screams of other men echo into the night. Goody sleeps poorly, but he has for over a decade now, familiar with the contours of his own pain and exhaustion.

What he isn’t familiar with is Billy’s suffering: he listens to Billy jerk and fumble through fitful sleep, pain eased only when the good doctor deems it bad enough to dole out a little something from the town’s small stash of laudanum. Goody lies awake, banged up and immobile, witness to Billy’s torment. None of the scrapes and bruises Billy acquired in the past put more than a slight, careful pause in his step.

This is something quite different: it’s intolerable.

But they’re neither of them below ground yet, and time grinds on, the weeks passing until Mrs. Cullen doesn’t have to bring a new shirt to replace Billy’s blood-soaked one every morning. Billy speaks more and more in English, again, abandons the half-whispered sentences of Korean that asked for something Goody doesn’t know how to give. (Mercy, maybe, but Goodnight Robicheaux is a selfish and cowardly man, and he’s not near being able to give his leave of Billy).

Goody sits five feet away, broken leg and broken nerves, waiting.

———

Mrs. Cullen and the townsfolk are kind enough to leave them alone for the most part, give them the time to lick their wounds in private.

Sam is not nearly as thoughtful, but that’s because he’s a ruthless son of a bitch who doesn’t have a shred of decency in him.

“Now that’s just unkind,” Sam remarks, calmly. Sam waits until Goody takes the first shuddering step down the staircase, grip white-knuckled on the bannister: “My mother was a fine and decent woman, god rest her soul.” Goody flinches hard at that, comes down wrong on the next step, swearing all the way down the stairs as Sam breaks from his level gaze and laughs at him, open-mouthed.

“You’re a cussed old bastard, Sam,” Goody grumbles, leaning hard against the porch railing. Sam doesn’t argue the point, grinning still at having ruffled Goody’s feathers: a shared trait, he supposes, of big brothers everywhere. Goody’s lost enough of those now to be grateful for the one he has left.

So he lets Sam pull him into the street through what’s left of Rose Creek and show him what’s to come.

Sam speaks of the others, each in his own stage of recovery, of riding out as a group. His dream of the future isn’t as bright as the one Goody remembers from before, but Sam’s voice is buoyant in a way it hasn’t been since he spoke on starting a life with his mother and sisters on a plot of land out west. Like burying Bogue has put something else to rest, the final smoothing out of dirt over old graves.

And Goody knows that he’s part of that future, that Sam wants him there, but all of Goody’s tomorrows have Billy in them.

Sam says, with a studied casualness: “Doctor tells me that Billy’s doing better these days. Infection seems to be running its course.” Then his voice gentles, just a bit. “Just something to think on,” Sam says, “if you’re interested. Both of you.”

Goody grunts something like an assent. Sam doesn’t press the issue, just clasps a hand on his shoulder. They stand there for a moment, Goody catching his breath. And then Sam swings him around again and waits for Goody’s slow, trudging steps to take them back.

———

The saloon is in considerable less disrepair than Goody would’ve imagined, given what he remembered in the aftermath of the battle. He reckons that’s not a fair accounting of things, seeing as how he was near passed out from breaking his fall from the church steeple with his left leg. Still, Goody remembers the particular manner of destruction a Gatling gun can wreak, and for a moment, he feels just a half-beat off pace with reality—disengaged from time, halfway in between Rose Creek and Petersburg.

He settles down at the table and smooths his hands over the wood. He tries not to look over his shoulder, waiting for someone who’s in no shape to comfort him.

The others settle in, one by one, catch him up on the process of rebuilding the town: seems the miners are integrating well, receiving a warmer welcome than those families who have returned in the weeks following, hats in hand and tails between their legs. Mrs. Cullen flits from table to table, calling out names and listening to reports of this and that. Teddy stops by and pays his respects.

No one mentions the two missing from their company.

The time passes quickly, and soon enough Goody is begging his leave, head already muzzy from a glass or two of whiskey.

Vasquez laughs a little when Goody grumbles about his tolerance, questions whether it’s due to Goody’s convalescence or encroaching age. For that, Sam sends Vasquez out to walk Goody back to his lodgings: “Goody’s gonna need a hand getting back up those stairs, and that seems like just the job for a young fellow such as yourself.” Red Harvest looks carefully away as both Vasquez and Goody make a production out of the whole thing, removing themselves with no small amount of ribbing from the others.

Vasquez idles behind him as he makes his way back, offering an arm only when Goody starts flagging. Goody takes it grudgingly. “I keep on telling him,” Vasquez says, voice soft, “healing takes time. Ten paciencia.”

“Oh? And how well does he take your sage advice?” Goody asks, annoyed by the imagined pity and the pain in his leg.

Vasquez smiles, shrugs a little. “Poorly. But sometimes you need to hear it.”

He leaves Goody there at the threshold of their room, doesn’t ask to come in. Goody waits for the footsteps to fade before he opens the door. Hopes for the best.

———

Billy’s awake when he walks in, which can be good or bad, depending. He walks over to the side of Billy’s bed, tucks his hair behind his ears, watches Billy’s eyes focus on him: good, then.

“Where were you?”

“Went for a walk around town with Sam, had dinner at the saloon with the others. Wanted to give you some breathing room, Billy, it can’t be too restful having me wheezing at you from across the room all the time.” Goody perches on the side of the bed, mindful of Billy’s space.

A corner of Billy’s mouth twitches up. “Don’t know about that. Listened to your snoring long enough for it to be soothing.”

Goody grins at that, takes Billy’s hand, already thinking of an appropriately indignant riposte, but all that is stopped in its tracks by a sharp intake of breath.

“Billy, are you—“ he begins, moving to check on the bandages, wondering where the doctor can be found at this hour.

Billy grips his hand. “Goody. Stop.”

And Goody looks up at him, half-drunk, half-terrified, completely in love and mad as hell about all of it. Somehow, Billy sees something there that settles him, and he lets out a long, deep breath.

“Let me tell you a story, Goody.”

Goody opens his mouth to protest, insist upon medical attention, but the stubborn son of bitch just gets that patient look in his eye, the kind that says: _I can wait you out._ And lord knows Goody’s made Billy wait on him long enough already.

So Goody lets out a breath of his own, looks at Billy. Asks him for that story.

**Author's Note:**

> First multi-chaptered work. I don't know what I'm doing. Shout at me at [my tumblr](http://megajubbly.tumblr.com).
> 
> There's an interesting interview out there with Ethan Hawke that suggests that Goodnight might have been a member of the Louisiana Tigers. If he was with them until the end of the war, the timeline's right for him to have been there during the siege of Petersburg, where Gatling guns were used.


End file.
